Terraform cannot connect Chef provisioner with ssh - ssh

Question

I cannot get terraform's ssh to connect via private aws keypair for chef provisioning - the error looks to just be a timeout:
aws_instance.app (chef): Connecting to remote host via SSH...
aws_instance.app (chef): Host: 96.175.120.236:32:
aws_instance.app (chef): User: ubuntu
aws_instance.app (chef): Password: false
aws_instance.app (chef): Private key: true
aws_instance.app (chef): SSH Agent: true
aws_instance.app: Still creating... (5m30s elapsed)
Error applying plan:
1 error(s) occurred:
* dial tcp 96.175.120.236:32: i/o timeout
Terraform does not automatically rollback in the face of errors.
Instead, your Terraform state file has been partially updated with
any resources that successfully completed. Please address the error
above and apply again to incrementally change your infrastructure.
Here is my terraform plan - note the ssh settings.. the key_name setting is set to my AWS keypair name and the ssh_for_chef.pem is the private key
variable "AWS_ACCESS_KEY" {}
variable "AWS_SECRET_KEY" {}
provider "aws" {
region = "us-east-1"
access_key = "${var.AWS_ACCESS_KEY}"
secret_key = "${var.AWS_SECRET_KEY}"
}
resource "aws_instance" "app" {
ami = "ami-88aa1ce0"
count = "1"
instance_type = "t1.micro"
key_name = "ssh_for_chef"
security_groups = ["sg-c43490e1"]
subnet_id = "subnet-75dd96e2"
associate_public_ip_address = true
provisioner "chef" {
server_url = "https://api.chef.io/organizations/xxxxxxx"
validation_client_name = "xxxxxxx-validator"
validation_key = "/home/user01/Documents/Devel/chef-repo/.chef/xxxxxxxx-validator.pem"
node_name = "dubba_u_7"
run_list = [ "motd_rhel" ]
user_name = "user01"
user_key = "/home/user01/Documents/Devel/chef-repo/.chef/user01.pem"
ssl_verify_mode = "false"
}
connection {
type = "ssh"
user = "ubuntu"
private_key = "${file("/home/user01/Documents/Devel/ssh_for_chef.pem")}"
}
}
Any ideas?

Answer 1

I'm not sure if we had the same problem, since you didn't specify if you were able to ssh to the instance.
In my case, I was running terraform from within the VPC, and the connection was allowed with a security groups, which can't be used with a public IP.
the solution is simple (but you will have to use the new conditional interpolations of terraform v.0.8.0) -
Define this variable - variable use_public_ip { default = true }
Then, inside the connection section of the chef provisioner, add the following line -
host = "${var.use_public_ip ? aws_instance.instance.public_ip : aws_instance.instance.private_ip}"
If you wish to use the public IP, set the variable as true, otherwise, set it to false.
I use this for aws -
connection {
user = "ubuntu"
host = "${var.use_public_ip ? aws_instance.instance.public_ip : aws_instance.instance.private_ip}","
}